Once again—and for the last time—I have to thank you for re-electing me your President, and for again giving me the officers to support me on whose advice I have grown to depend. I think five years is about the right tenure for a President. When I had the honour of presiding over the Royal Archaeological Institute for three years, I felt that the moment for retirement came just as I was beginning to know my job; and if I had more than another year at the Antiquaries, I fear that I might begin to feel proprietary.

In March 1961, while inducting Mr. Inigo Jones into the wardenship of the Fyfield Down National Nature Reserve, I showed him the cup-markings I had found in the preceding spring on a sarsen in Delling Penning, not far without the reserve but on the same Wiltshire high ground. Appreciating his interest in these recondite prehistoric sculpturings and in the published account thereon that followed my report to the Society of Antiquaries, I asked Mr. Jones to let me know of any comparable or other markings that might strike him while patrolling the downland as outside the range of natural pittings and scorings that occur on so many of the Grey Wethers.

Originally thought to be a Neolithic long barrow, this site was proved by excavation to be the downhill half of a circular Roman earthwork, possibly an amphitheatre. It was excavated by the writer, assisted by her husband, Major H. L. Vatcher, on behalf of the Ministry of Works from April to July 1959.

Ploughing over the area as a whole for many years had considerably blurred the outlines of the earthwork, almost levelling the uphill half of the circle which was visible only at certain times and in certain lights, and had caused a great deal of hill-wash to accumulate in the hollow central part, while the bank of the excavated half had also been considerably spread and reduced in height.

The following eight fragments of samian moulds were found by Plicque at Lezoux and formerly belonged to the Oswald-Plicque Collection; they are now part of the Birley Collection at the Department of Archaeology, University of Durham.

Portchester Castle remained untouched by archaeologists until the Office of Works took charge of the site in 1926. From that date until 1938 tidying up operations were carried out, entailing the excavation of moats and the general lowering of the ground level within the Inner Bailey. In 1956 Mr. R. Robertson-Mackay, on behalf of the Ministry of Works, supervised the digging of a trial trench, to the south of the present road, across the line of the second Roman ditch outside the west wall of the fort. In June and July 1961, the writer excavated an area, 100 ft. by 30 ft., against the inside of the west wall, to the south of the Landgate, the work being organized by the Ministry of Works as a rescue excavation prior to the proposed construction of a changing-room and lavatory. The site was later considered to be unsuitable for such a structure, but it was decided to conduct further excavations, the first phase of which (Easter 1962—Easter 1963) was designed to examine the Roman defences. The work was carried out with the co-operation of the Ministry of Public Building and Works and was financed by grants from the Libraries and Museums Committee of the Portsmouth City Council, the Hampshire Field Club, and the Joint Archaeological Committee.

Two shrines of circular and polygonal shape, probably part of a larger group, were erected early in the second half of the third century A.D., and occupied until late in the fourth century. The shrines occur in an area of widespread settlement dating from the late Iron Age until the end of the fourth century. Many objects of bronze and iron of ritual significance, together with a large number of votive deposits and coins, were recovered from the circular shrine. Miss M. V. Taylor's discussion of the principal objects appears on pp. 264–8.

In 1956–7 a bronze statuette of horse and rider and another bronze object (a poletip or rattle) were found in a field a quarter of a mile south-west of Luscotes Lodge, Brigstock, and were published in Antiq. Journ. xxxvii, 71 with pi. xviii. In June 1958 a bronze statuette, cast solid, of a second horse, without rider, was found in the same field and is described below (no. 1). These finds seemed to confirm the possibility of a shrine or temple in the neighbourhood, and in consequence when deep ploughing seemed imminent the excavations described above by Mr. Greenfield were undertaken by the Ministry of Public Building and Works. In the course of this work further votive objects, including a third bronze statuette of horse and rider were discovered as recorded above. Of these, the statuettes and certain other objects form the subject of the following article.

In the latter part of the seventh century the power of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria reached its height. Upon its northern frontier, over against the Picts, a vigorous forward policy was adopted; and here, as so often in our early history, the Roman Church revealed herself as the ally of the State. Some part of the Pictish borderlands, south of the Forth, had by this time passed under Northumbrian control; and on the strength of this an Anglian churchman, Trumwin, was planted in 681 at Abercorn, with the portentous title of ‘Bishop of the Picts’. The Northumbrian Church thus intruded at Abercorn has left its monuments today in a hog-backed stone and some cross shafts, one of great beauty showing among its enrichments the characteristic Anglian vine-scroll. These ecclesiastical measures were the prelude to an invasion of Pictland on a great scale, upon which the whole power of the Northumbrian kingdom was bent under its able and warlike monarch, Egfrith. But the High King of the Picts, Brude MacBile, proved himself equal to the crisis. At the famous battle of Dunnichen, or Nechtan's Mere, on Saturday, 20th May 685, he utterly destroyed the Anglian army of invasion—Egfrith and the flower of his nobles being numbered among the slain. This memorable victory dealt a blow at the power of Northumberland from which that haughty and resplendent kingdom never recovered; and its rapid military, political, spiritual, and moral decline is rightly dated from that event.

In 1957 I published a note in the Antiquaries Journal on a small alabaster sculpture of the Virgin and St. Anne, which I considered to be of English origin, from Montpezat-de-Quercy, Tarn-et-Garonne, and noted that its subject was also represented on an English alabaster in the Hildburgh collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum that was believed to come from Bruniquel, also in Languedoc. The importation from England of alabaster sculptures of St. Anne teaching the Virgin to read is confirmed by yet another such group in the parish church of Saint-Jacques at Muret, Haute-Garonne. Its existence was revealed to me by M. Mathieu Meras, Directeur des Services d'Archives and Keeper of Antiquities at Montauban. He included it in an exhibition of “Tresors d'Art Gothique en Languedoc’ held at the Musée Ingres, Montauban, from June to September 1961.